


Fifteen Tales of Love & Revenge

by Reera the Red (nimmieamee)



Series: Notes from the Wizarding World [10]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:26:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 8,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimmieamee/pseuds/Reera%20the%20Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various kinds of love, or lack thereof, in the Wizarding World.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hero's Love

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a riff on the Pierces album.

Now, his ideas on romantic surprises stemmed from the Witch Weekly-sponsored Wireless plays his mum listened to; the half-brained lies about girls his brothers had fed him growing up; and the strange, wistful fantasies his father sometimes concocted, and so the first idea that flashed in his mind was, “Terribly exciting picnic in which you invite her out to a werewolf-laden forest, heroically defeat the dreadful beasts, tear off your robes, reveal yourself to be far more tanned and tone than genetics would suggest, and then passionately reward yourself by ravishing her for nineteen hours straight.” Swiftly followed by, “Picnic in which you are impossibly cool and collected, appearing older than she is and so worldly-wise, impressing her with your knowledge of Quidditch and Defense, and also all the clever put-downs you can come up with about Slytherins.” Swiftly followed by, “Wow her with how you understand basic Muggle technology.”

But he settled for picnic. Just a normal picnic. 

He was not a wowing sort of person, nor was he ever likely to impress her with his wisdom (their track record suggesting that she was, in fact, frequently wiser than he was), and he probably couldn’t keep it up for nineteen hours.

"This is where they proposed the new werewolf sanctuary and rehabilitative retreat, which is a very nice idea, of course," she said, as they unrolled the blanket, "What do you think?"

"Well—"

"I’m fully opposed, naturally. _The World Through Lupine Eyes_  outlines the full history of movements like this — have you read it? No, of course you haven’t. But essentially from the time something similar occurred in China fourteen hundred years ago, until the terrible uprisings of the Brazilian wolf packs just last year, it’s never worked. In practice, it’s separatist and cruel.”

Something rustled in the bushes. She shot off, impossibly-quick, first a spell to detect what it was, and then a Defensive spell to neutralize it should it be a threat. This display was rather impressive.

"That’s from the new drills Daphne Greengrass suggested for Auror recruits. You won’t have heard of it yet. Strictly secretarial business until they’re approved. I think they’re rather clever, which means she had help coming up with them. Oh, but look. It’s only a fawn. Quick, the camera. Didn’t you bring the magical one?"

He hadn’t. They only had hers, which was a gift from her parents and therefore rather ordinary. He didn’t know how to work it. She did.

They settled to eat.

"This is lovely," she said, after some time spent companionably in silence, "Thank you. I’m impressed, Ron."

Ron raised an eyebrow. “Hang on,” he said, “That’s not how it goes. I’m not trying to impress you.”

This was why her birthday had to be perfect, you see. Because Hermione was extraordinary, and liked being that way. She would not have enjoyed being rescued from werewolves. She was herself a rescuer. She would not have liked to sit in wide-eyed silence as he put down Slytherins and displayed his vast reserves of knowledge. Knowledge was something she made her own business, and needed no help with. 

And she knew how to work Muggle gadgets better than he did.

"You’re the impressive one," Ron continued, "I’m the impressed."

Hermione threw her arms around him and kissed him then, which was tremendously nice. Because he wasn’t lying. She was very impressive, and to be the one to kiss her made him a very lucky wizard indeed. 

"Oh, this is how it goes. Now you try to ravish me," Ron said, "After saving my neck from that fawn. Collecting your reward, I see. I’m on to you, Miss Hero."


	2. Forbidden Love

Mr. Smith and Mrs. Wenlock were dining at the Mulligan in Harrowyck Alley, which is the oldest and most established house club in England. Hufflepuff’s club, of course. And, being in such a traditional place, it was very shocking for them to see old Bertram Bones walk in with such a very untraditional dinner partner.

"I never would have believed it of him!" said Mrs. Wenlock, "That’s appalling."

"Now, now," said Mr. Smith, "Half his family is dead, and old Bertie still marches on. I think he’s earned a bit of fun, myself."

"You would," sniffed Mrs. Wenlock, "But with a woman like  _that_ —”

"Wouldn’t call her a proper woman myself, but her sort does like to dine with men five times their age. I suspect that’s how they earn their dinner," said Mr. Smith, between bites of veal. 

It was at this point that Bertie suddenly recognized them, after first indulging in some very puzzled, very elderly squints. He said, “Hello, hello, Hortense. Hello, Ephraim. Have you met the latest addition to the family?”

Mr. Smith choked on the veal. Mrs. Wenlock gave a horrified little start and whispered, “Helga’s  _knickers_ , does he mean—”

Mr. Smith waved her off and, having recovered, loudly said, “How terrific. So it’s to be a wedding, then?”

"What?" said Bertie, "Can’t hear you. Amplification charm, please. The old ears aren’t what they used to be."

Next to him, his dinner partner rolled her eyes.

"Oh, for the love of Ollivander’s," said Mrs. Wenlock.

"She’ll make off with Susan’s inheritance, and the good silver to boot," Mr. Smith told her in an aside, "Women like her are monsters underneath those good looks." Then he raised his voice, "So it’s to be a WEDDING, is it, Bertie?"

"What?" Bertie said.

But they were saved from further shouting, as at that point Susan came in.

"Oh, hello, Aunt Hortense; hello Mr. Smith," she said, "How  _is_  Zacharias? And have you met my fiance?”

Mrs. Wenlock dropped her fork and loudly excused herself, politely claiming that this was nice, Susan dear, but right now she had to see about the little girls’ room. Sputtering, Mr. Smith made an aborted sort of introduction and followed. He caught up with Mrs. Wenlock near the ladies’ and she cried, “Oh, Ephraim, it’s worse than I thought! He must be completely senile, marrying Susan off to that—that—”

“ _Veela_ ,” said Mr. Smith darkly.

When they finally made their way back to their seats, Susan was deep in conversation with her fiance. She was saying, in an aside of her own, “They’re always like that. It’s the club every day, and dull snap games at teatime, and when they excuse themselves they have to  _tinkle_ or _go to the little girls’_. You don’t know what you’re getting into with this family, darling. If you did, you wouldn’t marry me at all. You’d run away screaming.”

"Oh, not at all. I’ve quite made up my mind to marry you. How else am I supposed to make off with your inheritance?" said her fiance, loudly enough for the whole room to hear.

Mrs. Wenlock and Mr. Smith stared at her with a kind of dread.

Gabrielle winked at them. 


	3. A Friend's Love

Just before first year began, they shared a compartment. Both were very scared of what was to come, when the train alighted at that shining, alien castle. But soon enough they realized that — whatever happened — they would meet it with a friend. For they had a rousing good time, swapping Chocolate Frog cards, predicting the coming season for the Falcons, and comparing Dreadful Older Brothers, something they were relieved to find other boys had to suffer through as well. 

They both rooted for Diggory that year, as was to be expected. His death jolted them out of childhood, a bit. It was the first time this had ever happened for either of them. Before they got on the train at the end of the year, they met near the Whomping Willow, out of sight of their housemates, and swapped cards silently, glumly, until the first one said, “It shouldn’t have been him that was killed. He was the real champion, you know. Hufflepuff produced a real champion.”

And the second said, “Thanks.”

Before second year, they stole into a compartment and bolted the door shut so as not to be disturbed, and then they went over their summer essays. They were still going over Charms notes together six months later, if only where their housemates and brothers couldn’t find them. But then at the end of second year, the second boy found the first and said, “I didn’t join. I didn’t. I mean, MacMillan and Finch Fletchley tried to get me to—”

"Well, did you want to join?" said the other, looking very upset.

He had wanted to join. And it would have been disloyal to say that he hadn’t. But it would have been disloyal to his  _friend_  to admit as much, so instead he just shrugged.

"I knew it," the first boy said furiously, "You should have seen what they did to my mates!"  But then by the start of third year, coming off the train, his anger had cooled. The first boy forgave the second. He did this very loftily. He said, “My sort don’t forgive easy, you know.”

He couldn’t help wanting to keep a friend, and so he did forgive, just this once.

They were — by design — the only two in their respective houses to sign up for Divination. This meant they could enjoy the subject together, surrounded by a gaggle of Ravenclaw girls who didn’t care much about them anyway, and the first boy would invent terrible prophecies with great theatricality, sending the second into fits of laughter when Trelawney wasn’t looking.

After class, the second boy would go practice Defense with his brother and Finch-Fletchley. But the first didn’t need to know that.

"Thanks for forgiving me," the second told him one day, feeling a bit guilty, "It’s hard for us to change our minds and loyalties. I know it’s hard for one of your lot to do it, too.”

At the end of their third year, they discovered that this was true.

They could not speak in the train during their fourth year. The train was different that year — colder, crueler, rife with jailers. They could not speak until four months in, when the second boy was lagging behind a very gaunt MacMillan, keeping watch. They were on their way to the Room of Requirement, escaping, but the first stumbled upon them before they could get there.

"Don’t tell," hissed the second, "Don’t."

The first boy looked hurt. 

"I wouldn’t!" he said, "I wouldn’t betray you." Then a realization hit him, and he became sulky. "Not like you’re betraying  _me_.”

"Just Obliviate him," snapped MacMillan.

But the second boy couldn’t do it. And before MacMillan could, the first boy had run off down the corridor.

MacMillan cursed. “He’ll tell!” he cried.

But the second boy didn’t believe his friend would tell, and in fact his friend didn’t. Not ever. The first boy kept the secret until the day he died, sneaking up from the dungeons to help an older brother who had a horrible grimacing tattoo on his left forearm. 

That was, coincidentally, the same day the second boy died, intercepting a curse meant for MacMillan.

They met on the train for one last ride.

"I never told," the first boy said, very haughty about it, "And also, you’re late. Just like every year, duffer Whitby is last to get on the train."

"You’re acting very high-and-mighty for someone looking so small, Baddock," was all Kevin Whitby said.

"Speak for yourself!" But then Malcolm Baddock relented. "I always thought — what with your  _sneaking_  and  _lying_  — that if I’d just met you before, when we were small, before that stupid first train ride… Well. I could have shaped you into a fine Slytherin, you know?”

"You know your house is amounts to more than sneaking and lying," said Whitby, bypassing the point entirely (which Baddock thought was just like a Hufflepuff), though he had always wondered something similar. "Or, well.  _I_  know it. I knew you wouldn’t rat us out, Baddock. You’re good as gold.”

Baddock went pink, but tried to cover it up by saying, “Wonder what we’ll meet when the train stops. What we’ve earned, if it’s punishment or—”

"Who cares?" said Whitby, "We’ll meet it together, won’t we?"

"Friends?" Baddock said.

"Friends," said Whitby.

Fast friends with a Slytherin. And his brother had said that it couldn’t be done.

(Whitby had always known his older brother was full of it.)


	4. An Inexplicable Love

Consider Knockturn, with its curious and sloping doorways which seem to promise untold riches, but reveal instead hags, Dark Wizards, and drug-addled werewolves on the stair. Consider the marvelous bejeweled bottles its denizens will sell you, which contain only poisons or potions promising ill fortune. Consider the menacing gleam in each handsome young shopkeeper’s eye; the hushed voices of wizards and witches who would not enter Knockturn if you paid them fifty galleons up-front; and the Aurors who travel there in packs, ready in an instant to take one in for questioning.

There was in Knockturn a man named Greengrass, not unwealthy, but not terribly rich either, and in proper Knockturn fashion he sold nothing green or grassy but instead blackened bits of creeping shrub with unusual uses, and sprouts and shoots to make enemies shrink, and all manner of leafy cuttings to halt the course of nature. And he had two daughters. The first befriended a snub-nosed person who looked down on the family for being “in trade,” and in time through such connections she married a man for his riches and his jewels and his carefree good looks, and this makes sense, for little girls who grow up in Knockturn want nothing more than to leave it behind.

And the second? She married a man who’d pawned most of his jewels to make Wizengamot clerks look the other way, and whose riches could not make up for the whispers that surrounded his family name, and who possessed no good looks, for his chin was really very pointed and in fact people tended to point out that his was not a carefree and handsome aspect, but a bullying and ferrety one.

But this makes sense too. Little girls who grow up in Knockturn know perfectly well that appearances do not tell the whole story.


	5. A Mutual (Rather Casual) Love

Valmai and Wilda, best in the league, were friends once. This was before Wilda was written up in  _Witch Weekly_  for being seen with dashing Pyotr Vulchanov of the Bulgarian national team, coincidentally Valmai’s former beau. This was before Wilda abandoned the Harpies for Puddlemere (where she flew miserably), giving Valmai a chance to shine and earn an extra forty-seven galleons per week. This was before they both wore the same ice-blue robes to the Ministry’s charity Quidditch match, after which the  _Prophet_  polled hundreds of unrelated persons asking who wore it best, under a headline that read: LEAGUE’S BEST FEMALE PLAYERS ARE BITTEREST RIVALS AND ENEMIES. When Wilda saw that, she blinked once and then floo-called Valmai, who she hadn’t properly spoken to since they’d graduated and stopped co-captaining the Hufflepuff team.

"Now listen here," she told Valmai very sternly, "I’m furious. I’ve never been so insulted—"

"Neither have I!" Valmai retorted hotly, "First off, because I didn’t even select those stupid robes myself; you can have them—"

"Don’t want ‘em, darling. Didn’t you hear? I’ve got my own," said Wilda, "But this, this is beyond—"

"I quite agree," said Valmai.

The headline really was very insulting. Best  _female_  players? What rubbish. They both knew perfectly well they were best players in the league, period.

"Hang on, Wilda," Valmai said, forty minutes into the floo call, "What’s that crash? Is everything alright over there?"

"Oh, that’s just Pyotr," said Wilda, "Throwing things again."

"How like him. How is the old dear?"

"Bitterly upset over how they’ve cropped him out of a photograph with Ivan Volkov in it."

"Ivan, Ivan… Hang on. I think I played against him once. Or possibly made love to him. Can’t recall the face. I want to say he’s a Beater?"

"Pyotr’s co-beater. You remember — that continental rag, the  _Oracle_ , ran a whole spread on how they’re practically blood brothers, loyal to each other ‘til the end, faithful hounds of the sport—”

"Oh, I remember now," Valmai said, "Pyotr  _hates_  him.”

"Tried a blood-boiling hex on him during the World Cup and got one of those blasted mascot leprechauns instead," said Wilda cheerfully, "Oh, darling, how fun it is to talk to you again. Let’s go down to mum’s this weekend and wander the grounds like we used to?"

"Let’s," said Valmai, "I’m  _so_  glad we’ve reconnected.”


	6. A Mother's Love

Common sense, and a moment’s reflection, will tell us that the painful aftereffects of their son’s latest escapade have been grievously exaggerated. His father points this out in his drawling manner. First, if the arm was truly wrenched from its socket and thrown across the clearing (as a gaggle of Gryffindors laughed and were petted by Albus Dumbledore himself for their trouble) then how could the boy have composed an Owl, which is written very plainly in his own handwriting?

Second, this does remind one of the instance with the house-elf, which their young darling, when pressed, explained as a despicable Potter plot to liberate rightful family property. Third, one also recalls the instances with father’s flying horses and the instances with the wild jarveys and even that harrowing moment with the goblin, and it does make sensible people wonder why a child with such a clear (rightful, perhaps, but clear) antipathy for animals, exotic beings, and foreign creatures of any sort, might decide to enroll in a class which focuses on that very topic.

"Animals  _love_  him,” says the boy’s mother, in a tone that will brook no argument, clearly dismissing thirteen years of evidence to the contrary.

And here the father must sigh. He had suggested Arithmancy.

For those who believe that Lucius is arrogant to the point of utter stupidity are wrong. He is not, for example, so stupid or so clearly taken with the boy that he bows to his child’s every whim, and in fact at the news that Gryffindors have bested Draco (again) he feels the natural parental disappointment. Also a moderate sense of being unjustly wronged by those who have encroached upon what belongs to him. What belongs to him may be catalogued in this manner, from most prized to least: Gringotts vaults, Dark library, Manor, peacocks, Grandmother’s jewels, hidden vaults in the Carpathians, the Chateau, the Palazzo, flying horses, Slytherin Quidditch trophy of ‘70, Slytherin Quidditch trophy of ‘69, Draco, clothes and other miscellaneous effects, house-elves.

And so, above all, he is extremely annoyed with everyone involved, and especially with Draco.

But it is no use explaining this to Draco’s mother, because, for her part, Narcissa will see that Hippogriff dead.


	7. A Brother's Love

Their second child they named Odette, a lovely swan, for the delicate feminine grace in the baby face, for the wide and womanly mouth.

Their first child, later on, saw this for the cheat it was.

The baby christened Odette grew, and grew beautiful, and grew unhappy. 

"Oh, Odette, are you Odile?" they would tease.

"No!" was the rejoinder, "But I am  _not_  Odette!”

And there came a sudden fascination with strange, untested bits of mediwizardry; and when cousin Rita brought over, just as a tease, her now-departed pets, the child who’d had the name Odette forced on him like a yoke held them up and said, “I’d like to be like this. Like this.”

"Darling, it’s been infected with a magical parasite, the one on the left. With one of those awful mites that turns female to male! It kills the proteins, saps the womb—"

"I wish that had happened to me! I wish my Animagus form were like Rita’s! I’d get myself  _infected_!” 

“ _Darling_!”

But not-Odette was not an insect. To be a thing which creeps about, hidden and unlucky, was contrary to his nature. He was a lion, bold and brave, and with a lion’s mane. And he nearly wept from it, half-pleased, for it showed that only one of his forms was all twisted and contrary.

"I’m glad," said his brother, very fiercely. "It’s wrong, to trap a person in a swan. It’s like being an Animagus who can’t turn back, I reckon. It’s chicanery. It’s a scam. All the world is one big swindle, and until now you’ve just been duped. Well, we’ll dupe them back. I’ll make a bundle — you’ll see — and I’ll invest it in that new transformations work they’re doing at St. Mungo’s, or the strange surgeries the Muggles have. We’ll use it to get around all these Ministry regulations on self-transfiguration. And we’ll dupe them back."

"No. No. Who I am — not my body, but me, I mean. That’s not a dupe. That’s me, Ludo. It’s me."

But Ludo persisted in thinking the way he did, stung by the unfairness of it all, and not quite understanding.

Which was not to say that he was not a good brother. His love was often misguided — he invested foolishly, and made poor deal after poor deal, and had a notion that, this cruel trick having been played on the family, all bets were off, and all gambits square. But it was love all the same. When Weasley helped them out with the lawnmower, Ludo gave away a whole parcel of World Cup tickets, tickets he’d been planning to sell.

Not because of the lawnmower. 

It was because Weasley had said, “Your brother’s getting along better with that Muggle contraption now, I take it? Good. Good. He’s a good man, your brother Otto.”

 


	8. An Ardent Love

There was a certain book with an attractive bright green cover. It received accolades from the  _Prophet,_  garnered its author thousands of galleons, and brought entertainment to generations of young persons. But it was the bane of Madam Pince’s existence. 

It was an American book; American witches and wizards loved self-help nonsense. And yet  _Brewing a Better You: Twenty Tonics of Kindness to Win You The Wizard of Your Dreams_ , by Philetus Reese Washington, seemed to captivate even British witches aged eleven through eighteen. Never had a book been returned late so many times! Never before had a tome been held hostage by the entire Hufflepuff dormitory, all consulting it in turns before the Yule Ball. Never before had Madam Pince opened to the table of contents and found entire headings circled in purple ink —  _defiled_ ; not to mention the ripped pages when one got to Washington’s personality tests in the third chapter; not to mention the love notes on pages 134 through 176, penned by a pair of sixth year Ravenclaw girls who had read the thing from cover to cover and concluded that no wizards existed in their dreams. 

The entire affair horrified Madam Pince. She took a tonic (a real one) to steady her nerves, and declared the thing confined to the library. None could check it out. It would remain on the shelf, to be consulted as a reference tool, never again floating from student to student and subjected to the most horrible abuses. Madam Pince ruled over her dominion like the tyrants of old, with absolute power, and so she planted the book firmly in a corridor leading the Restricted Section (fully visible from her desk), and Charmed it to that one location, and there it stayed. This did not dissuade those young witches and wizards who longed, as Celestina Warbeck did in most of her songs, for a dream wizard. They simply came to the corridor to read it, sharing furtive glances and even more furtive giggles, flouting their fancies before Madam Pince. 

All but Hermione. Hermione despised wooly self-help nonsense more than Madam Pince did. And if perhaps she had gazed longingly at the thing in her fourth year before a strapping Bulgarian chanced to take her to the Yule Ball, she would never admit it. The truth was: much as she loved books, she couldn’t bear to be seen as the kind of person who would seriously and frequently consult a book like  _that_. She’d read it once with Parvati and Lavender. But aside from that, she never touched it, except in her prefect years. Then, she would find it sitting abandoned after hours when she came to return her Restricted Section pass, and then she would pick it up and calmly put it back in its place, with perhaps a touch less aggression than beleaguered Madam Pince was wont to use. Once, while very tired, half-thinking, really not her most rational self at that hour, she told it: "It’s not _your_  fault you’re such a silly book.”

But that was it. She had no further contact with the thing. And the years passed, and she muddled her way through romance using far more cleverness and self-righteous fury than feminine kindness, and before long she was a woman with the job of her dreams, visiting Tintagel’s magical library (four hundred floors of books in every language, magically defying the laws of space and time by overlapping with every other library in the world; basically the library of her dreams), and then she met  _him_.

He was surely not the wizard of her dreams. American, with breezy good looks and a fondness for wooly American pseudo-science, he would pass by her very loudly and rudely while she was trying to read — he was shelving things, always shelving things — and somehow he would manage to keep her attention. He paid her endless compliments, and not the usual ones, which were all about a witch’s hair and eyes, but ones calculated to make bookworms wriggle: “Everyone just uses the books, really; but you, you  _love_  them, because you’re better than that,” and “You don’t pick up just any dumb series, do you? You really know what you’re looking for, and you go for it,” and “I’ve seen you traveling down library corridors, you know; I’ve noticed you, every time,” and “Oh, to be the page that your slim hand turns!”

It was silly, intellectually speaking. But it had an effect. Hermione — who had a wizard at home, though not really the sort of wizard that could be called a wizard of _dreams_  — found her mind turning in all sorts of odd directions.

"He’s very sweet, but a nuisance," she confided in Ginny.

"Hex him," Ginny said decisively. Hermione tested the method and found that the hex had no effect, save to muss the fellow’s green jacket a bit, making him seem even more rakishly attractive.

"I can’t help but think he’s a bit familiar, that’s all," she told Harry.

"Dark magic?" Harry suggested. Harry was in the middle of Auror training and had Dark magic on the mind, though to be completely honest when Harry wasn’t thinking of Dark magic he was thinking of Quidditch, and this was preferable to that. And, to Harry’s credit, such an ardent romantic attraction as this fellow had formed couldn’t really be  _regular_  magic.

"He’s almost not a person at all," Hermione told Luna. "That’s how focused on me he is. It’s unnatural. Almost inhuman, like something out of a book."

Luna thought that was her answer, right there. Hermione agreed. 

"Or he’s rude and horrible, like Ginny said," offered stout Neville, going on to second Ginny’s call to hexing.

But Hermione was not one repeat failed methods. She was very scientific about romance, when she wasn’t being furious about it, and so she retired to bed to think about the thing. She wrote Madam Pince a brief Owl. Madam Pince replied speedily and confirmed that certain shelves in the Hogwarts library were shared with Tintagel, yes. And that yes, this did happen sometimes with books. Books could be odd like that. Distracting them was the only answer, and this was largely a matter of proper shelving.

So then the only remaining step was to consult Ron.

"Wha…?" said Ron, turning over, half asleep.

“ _Twelve Fail-Safe Ways To Charm Witches_ ,” Hermione repeated, “Do you still have it?”

Ron squinted at her. “No…?” he said. “Hang on, am I in trouble?”

"Just give it to me," Hermione said.

"You’re the only witch for me," Ron assured her. "Unless  _you_  like witches. I mean. Not that I would be upset! That’s fine. We can experiment, even! You know, I’ve always had my suspicions about Bill and Percy—”

"Give. Me. The. Book."

Ron surrendered it. It had a leggy blonde witch on the cover, the spitting image of Madam Rosmerta. She was lovingly caressing a broomstick. This made Hermione roll her eyes. Hermione took this book to Madam Pince the very next day. Madam Pince said, “Yes, that will do the trick.”

And when Hermione put it on the shelf, she tapped its fellow absentmindedly and said, “You two will be perfect together.”

When she next went to Tintagel, she experienced no trouble at all. She saw her American friend, of course. He was with another witch. She’d somehow conspired to smuggle a broomstick into the library. No one was making her leave; she was far too leggy and blonde to be thrown out of anywhere.

They waved at Hermione.

"You have bested the love experts," said the American, clasping his hands to his bosom. Then he departed with his newfound paramour.

"Hmm," Hermione said. She’d spent her life loving books. Ordinary Muggle books, even. Textbooks and everyday novels and long tracts on mathematics or burial customs or podiatry or the origins of mankind…

But only magical books decided they loved you  _back_. 


	9. A Secret Love

'Round the bend of Diagon there is a place called Harrowyck Alley, which opens out onto a rare patch of green, a small and embattled forest that has somehow survived in London after all these years. Harrowyck is where now stands the statue of Albus Dumbledore, and where they say Potter and his friends have begun flat-hunting. Harrowyck is suited to tired heroes. It is not like cozy Habbitew Alley, where the Hufflepuff gentry keep their townhouses. It is not like strange, oft-disappearing Unarckic Alley, which swallows up the Ravenclaws and spits them back out, years later, cleverer and stranger than before. It is a mass of proud and lonely-seeming buildings of uncertain origin, which permit one to live side by side with one's fellows, hearing from the open windows streams of music, of chatter, of passionate fighting, while still, somehow, keeping hidden the source of all this life and noise. This is the nature of a truly effective city dwelling: by some magic, one is ever surrounded by people, and yet one never has to see them. The buildings are criss-crossed with private elevators, winding back stairs, and hidden entries, and so perfect, perfect privacy is achieved. 

Harrowyck is also very near to the MLE’s portal to the Ministry, and very far from the offices of the  _Prophet_. It is highly desirable real estate for Aurors, criminal masterminds, and persons on Ministry probation. Many a moneyed pureblood keeps a flat there; Harrowyck is the ideal place to hole up and await trial, or to conceal a secret. The Aurors would not disrupt their hallowed home privacy simply to break a case. To maintain their cityfied isolation, to keep up the solitary magic of Harrowyck Alley, they permit a kind of armistice, though if one should pass them in the halls of a building one should be very careful to hide any contraband, as Aurors, being Aurors, might note it and file it away to be pursued in another time and place.

Now, in 27 Harrowyck 19J there lived Auror Tonks and Auror Shacklebolt, splitting between them the costs of the rent. In 27 19Y there lived Auror Dawlish, their most sworn workplace enemy. This presented a dilemma, a test of the Alley’s endless calm, for 19J and 19Y faced each other across the courtyard, and Mr. Dawlish could see, behind the hastily-thrown up curtains of 19J, the shadows of his rivals accomplishing very mundane un-Auror-like tasks: preparing breakfast, answering Owls, laughing with friends, dissecting  _Prophet_  articles, and the like.

And indeed they could see him as he sat at the kitchen table and tried to solve a case. He became very paranoid that they might steal his breakthroughs, but this never happened. The armistice held. They kept to their cases and he to his. Mind, Auror Tonks was a kind person by nature, but her kindness was so tested by Auror Dawlish that if she saw him in the halls she would only say a very stiff hello, for at work he was a true burden to the Department. He was forever siding with Mr. Fudge, insisting that she and Shacklebolt receive black marks for their maverick methods; and he always eyed them suspiciously over his viscous and disgusting mug of coffee, as though they harbored pro-Dumbledore, anti-Ministry sentiments (which, indeed, they did). 

Shacklebolt, for his part, never said anything at all. He was always strictly professional with Dawlish at work; they had a kind of politeness stalemate going, which infuriated Dawlish to no end. Shacklebolt really  _was_  a good Auror, he felt, not a bleeding heart like Tonks. And there was in Dawlish a secret voyeur, solitary and sad and blessed by the magic of Harrowyck Alley, which was comforted only by the sight of Shacklebolt buttering toast across the way, or humming along to the Wireless, and, as much as they fought over Mr. Fudge’s methods, when they caught each other in the elevator Shacklebolt always nodded very handsomely, and it was like there was no conflict between them at all. The armistice held. Even as Shacklebolt was demoted time and time again for his suspect alliances; and Dawlish leapt ahead, was promoted ever-upwards, was taken into the confidences of slick Mr. Yaxley, and very wisely never put a toe out of line with Fudge lest it should cost him his workplace advances — the armistice held.

Perfect calm, no cruel words, no suspicious glances, always passing each other, silently and calmly, as though they belonged to completely different worlds. Though in truth they saw each other every day, and lived perhaps twenty feet apart. For years.

Until the night the Ministry should fall. Dawlish stumbled home in a daze, saw the light go on in thw window of 19J, heard a pop of Apparition, and saw a sworn enemy of the new regime, the half-giant manservant of Albus Dumbledore, conspiring with Shacklebolt in the kitchen across the way. And so here was incontrovertible proof. Shacklebolt was no Auror, no friend to the government. He was a rebel, an agitator, an Undesirable. And yet, as John Dawlish gazed across at this criminal, the criminal caught sight of  _him_.

Now, it would have been very easy for Shacklebolt to confund him. Dawlish was not a good Auror, and quite susceptible in that regard. But Shacklebolt did not confund him. Would not, perhaps. He respected the armistice. He put a finger to his lips.  _Shhh. Don’t tell._ And Dawlish never did. Oh, to be sure, Dawlish was a coward and a bit of a beast when outside Harrowyck Alley. He was ambitious to the core; he longed to get ahead in any regime. He bullied children, he sought to torment even old Augusta Longbottom. A touch of Imperius, courtesy of Mr. Yaxley, was at play; but that really excused nothing. 

And yet he had a strange kind of bond with his neighbor, a city bond, born out of brief sightings and quiet moments, that would not let him tear down the Armistice, declare, “Here are the rebels! Let us raid their den!” And every night he would glance out of the window to see if Shacklebolt and Tonks were home (they never were), not because he wished to betray them, but simply because he wished to see them. He was connected to them. This is how lonely city magic works.

After the war, Shacklebolt knocked on the door of 19Y for the first time in his life. He said, “They’re going to arrest you, John.”

John Dawlish said, “I know.”

He asked after Auror Tonks.

"Dead," said Shacklebolt, and managed to convey in that one word the opinion that she had been worth four hundred of John Dawlish.

Shacklebolt gave his Owl address, for some reason. A very deliberate action, for naturally Dawlish already knew it (27 Harrowyck 19J) and meant to convey some kind of permission. For what? They did not know each other; they were only neighbors.

Dawlish wrote him, while in prison. Shacklebolt wrote back. Nothing important. Only mundane things, the Owl post equivalent of catching sight of someone across the way through a window, someone captivating, with a bright smile, who butters their toast and laughs with a friend, and has a secret world you long to reach, but never can, really.

After Dawlish’s imprisonment, after Shacklebolt had served two successful terms, they moved to Habbitew Alley. Shacklebolt’s father had left him a townhouse; Shacklebolt had always known he would end up there, somewhere warm and cozy. Dawlish did not go back to work; his husband would not re-hire him. Instead he puttered around the house, somewhat surprised at his good fortune.

Auror Tonks’s son took 19J. He shared the costs of the rent with one of the Potter boys. Across the way lived a cousin he had never met, a Mr. Malfoy. They passed each other in the halls sometimes. They were very polite. They could each see the light in the window opposite. They marveled at it. It was mundane and joyous, very human.


	10. The Artist's Love

Some families tend to throw boys — families like the Weasleys and the Longbottoms and the Baddocks — and hers did, too. So she was very coddled. Special. Cherished. Pale and perfect and aloof even from a young age. Guarded always by her half-crup pup (she’d begged and begged and driven poor Papa mad until he agreed to bend convention and buy her that mutt), she spent her days between the pale pink walls of the nursery, or else in cousin Nott’s house, or else with her small hand in her mother’s, trailing sweetly behind her in Diagon and shielding her pretty eyes from the goblins and hags there.

Once, just once, she was taken into Muggle London, on her way to meet a very handsome distant Black cousin. And a starving Muggle sketching portraits on the street saw her, and called out, and was ignored, but was never again able to erase her image from his mind.

She was married in due course to the Nott cousin, and spent the latter half of her life worried her husband might die at the hands of the Aurors, printing pamphlets for the righteous cause of purity, despairing she might never have a son, going half-mad in that great horrible old country house (better to live there, she thought, than where there was so much Muggle filth), waking in the night and shivering and fearing that her nephew might ruin the name with some Knockturn trollop, scribbling deranged-sounding Owls to advise her brother on which of those Black girls would make a suitable niece, finally —  _finally_  — having the child she dreamed of; and seeing him to his fifth birthday, when, while out for a walk with the boy the countryside, she thought she saw a filthy Muggle tramp come up behind them, and, springing to the her child’s defense, aimed, misfired, and was caught by her own ricocheting spell.

And after that she was forgotten by most.

But not the starving Muggle artist. Years later, a collector (Malfoy, D.) stumbled onto someone who looked familiar, purchased her image, woke in the night shivering after some nightmare, remembered he had meant to owl it to Nott, a distant cousin, and did so.

_Looks a bit like your mum. Asked father. He compared it to the portrait in the library and said if it weren’t Muggle trash it would be his Aunt Seraphina down to the last gold hair. Funny, I thought._

_No need to reply.  
D.M._


	11. An Animal's Love

Following his encounter with that clever young human who’d done him a good turn, the snake made it to Brazil. And he soon met up with likeminded souls - hissers and sibilaters and coiling slitherers, the hippest creatures in the jungle, the venomous rulers of their domain. No more zoos for him. Victorious, he shed his skin seventy times over, growing more and growing freer with each new incarnation of himself.

But he always suspected that he wasn’t like the other hissers. He’d had a conversation with one of the world’s walking (or rather stumbling, because who would choose to walk instead of slither?) nuisances, and he’d come out the better for it. He was changed. Cleverer. Brighter. Magical. Each time he shed his skin, he emerged stronger and more unique. But there was a contradiction there. The strength radiated from a strange, steadfast, inner part of him that would never shed or slither away or change. A thoroughly non-hip, un-snakelike part. The memory-keeping part of him. The part that worryingly suspected that his old friend couldn’t possibly be enjoying life as much as he was. The part that nevertheless wished the boy success.

This was the part of him that would not forget his  _amigo_.


	12. I Love You Too

When Ron looked at the pile of wedding gifts the following morning, he was forced to conclude that their guests had really known what kind of bride they were shopping for.

"It would have been nice to get a some dessert plates or a teapot or something," he remarked halfheartedly. "You’re going to help pack now, right? Remember? Our honeymoon and everything?"

And Hermione said a kind of, “Mmhmm,” like she hadn’t really heard him.

"Alright then," he said, "I’ll pack, and you’ll write the thank you Owls for…all that." But then, because he’d known exactly who he was marrying, he relented. "Fine. We’ll both write the thank yous."

And Hermione gave a kind of wave like she was only half-listening.

Later on, she found him packing and brandished several wedding gifts at him. Such as  _Building A Home With A Witch Who Knows Nothing About Quidditch_  by Eden Concord and  _Thirteen Fail-safe Ways to Not Disappoint Your Spouse, For the Lackluster Wizard_  by Caris Muirne, and  _Are You A Terrible Husband? Never Fear! The Principles of Wizard Chess Will Teach You All You Must Know!_  by Agamemnon Dewey.

"I think these are for you," she said.

"Wow," Ron said, "Wow. Who is this from—oh, Parvati. And Romilda Vane. And—"

"All the Gryffindor girls, actually," said Hermione, "I think they pitched in."

And instead of complaining about the nature of the books, which was sure to start an argument, Ron only said, “Yep. Glad they thought of me. Because, you know, books. That’s what I’m really into.  _Books_.”

Which was a kind of, “I love you.”

And Hermione playfully swatted him with the chess book, which was a kind of, “I love you too.”


	13. The Old Dead Skin (Learning to Love Herself)

The nightmare that plagued her loved ones for years afterwards looked like this: _her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever_.

But if you were to meet her afterwards, you might be shocked at how she gave no indication of being affected by that nightmare. How alive she was, how bold, and how markedly different. Here was a new person. Here was no meek, crumpled form wasting away in a moldy dungeon, water dripping on the bones, flesh eaten away, a rotting thing with coils of well-preserved bright hair.

 _Because it didn’t happen_ , thought her mother.  _She’s safe now_ , thought her father. _Thank Merlin_ , thought her brothers.

But privately, she’d always assumed that it did happen. Something had died. Something had been discarded and left behind in the chamber. She had simply resolved to make it the fearful something, the selfish something that worried incessantly about boys who might like her, the something too paralyzed to speak; the something which might have been too self-conscious to befriend loony or round-faced, unpopular people; the something obsessed with staying quiet and meek and nice. That something was rotting at the bottom of the dungeon now.

And when she had the dream, it did not scare her. It only reminded her that she’d died and come out on the other side, and she would do so again, she would be foolish and she would be manipulated and she would rot and she would fail, because all people did. But you could choose what part of you would live on. You could recover. New. Unafraid.


	14. No Love Lost

That fellow Zabini imported a wife, the same way one might ask to have a very fine and sacred artwork shipped to them, something stolen from the wall of a museum (where all might enjoy it), and tossed on the Knockturn market, and then seized up by some wealthy opportunist and affixed in the drawing room, on the wall, to be enjoyed by only a select few, a crime everyone is aware of but no one can prove, a rare bit of beauty and a taunt all at once.

And it always seemed to her, struggling to learn his language, that underneath all his pretty love speech he was really telling her as much. He was telling her: “I’ve rescued you, and I’ve stolen you at the same time. Where you were, with your family - thankfully all magical, but so very  _poor_ compared to us, all the same, and so very uneducated, and so unable to appreciate what they had, looking on you in that stupid, small-minded way — that was not the place for you. My arm is the place for you. And here you will stay. A thing I display. Because this is what you have always been. A thing to display.”

When he died, no one thought to trace it back to the very lovely thing in the drawing room. She hardly even spoke the language, after all, so how could she have masterminded something like that? And, in any case, she was busy looking down at the child in her arms and telling him, in her own language, of the cut-glass vase her noble grandfather had once purchased from a neighboring land, of how the vase had stood proudly in the hall, admired by all, how it had been nothing but a sad and empty thing with no life in it, and how a small girl had crept in and stuck a snake in the vase when no one was looking, just for a bit of fun, just to have something alive, to disrupt that tedious beauty everywhere.

And when the snake sprang out and killed? Well. That was a crime no one could prove. The little girl had felt bad about it, at the time. But now she knew how terrible it was to be condemned as beautiful and lifeless, only the sort of thing one might look upon, nothing more.

"Unless I should have a snake coiled inside me," she told her son, "Waiting, very patiently, to strike."


	15. A Fierce, True Love

Have you heard of Bill’s near-life experience?

Not his near-death experience. That was the werewolf thing. But the werewolf thing was a blessing in disguise. You’ll see why soon.

Bill was tall and pale and bright-haired, could achieve anything, and was always first — first born, first named, first in through the door — winning all the prizes, captivating the prettiest witches, cooler than cool, all leather and dragonhide. You know this. But he was also, in that way all truly cool people are,  _weird_. He’d picked up something of his oddball dad, in that he fixated on the esoteric, the non-magical, the goblin-made, the bizarre. Bill’s peers set out to carve their way up through the Ministry. Bill only wanted to go down — into tombs, into vaults, into strange caverns at the center of the earth.

See, always being first and always winning wasn’t exciting. You needed a little bit of danger, a little loss now and then. You needed to get dragged down, to side with the misshapen and the strange against those who would cheat them, to flirt with some sharp-witted bird girl your mum hated. Bill knew this. So when Grabclaw — Bill’s boss — held up the file on someplace called the Damia’s Cavern, a place of legend, a place of death, a place no curse-breaker had come back from, the home of the oldest and purest witch in the world, Bill jumped at it. He thought it might be the coolest place yet: skulls piled high, bones crunching beneath the boot, treasures barred from access by terrible winding serpents and fountains of venom. And, true to form, to reach the cavern, Bill had to suffer through all of that, and it was exciting, and it was dangerous, and it was oh-so- _Bill_. 

But the cavern itself was a letdown.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was beautiful. It was suffused with light, and the fountains brought forth clear water and nectar and wine, and the vast halls shone like gold. And the Damia! What a stunning creature  _she_  was. Older than old, Bill knew, but so youthful-seeming, with her shining platinum eyes and hair, and her laugh like a song. 

She laughed because he’d thought there might be skulls there. How young and fair and dear she found him. How perfect, even with those scars of his, which indeed only added to Bill’s cool, Bill’s charm. The Damia was like Bill. She collected odd and dangerous things, she liked a bit of glamour, she couldn’t abide all this boring golden rock — oh, wouldn’t Bill stay with her? Just for a bit? Just to keep her company? 

Now, something in the back of Bill’s mind rebelled against the perfect Damia. She was  _too_  perfect. She was so beautiful, and her skin so clear and inviting, and her nails so sharp and shining. And sometimes he thought he could see, reflected in the golden nectar fountains, tall and white forms, an endless parade of handsome young men, drowning and gasping out for air. But he’d blink and they were gone. And then the Damia would laugh coyly and tell Bill that sometimes she collected the dearest trinkets, every now and then. The dearest, most perfect, coolest little specimens. Not like those failures that usually came out of the human race, oh no. Not like those monster creatures that they intermarried with sometimes. 

Bill had a wife, up on the surface. Not a pure being, but a pretty one, a sharp one, a dangerous one, a bird-girl, from high up in the air, who was perfect for him. Now the memory of her began to leave him. He would catch it sometimes, when he ran his fingers over his scars, but then the Damia would take his hand and bring it to her breast, and he’d forget again, forget his monstrous wife and the three rambunctious, fierce little children who were waiting for him at home.

"Your home is an awful place," the Damia told him, "With nothing but danger and bigotry and evil, and eventual death. And here everything is perfect, and you will always win, and I will preserve you forever."

And the parts of Bill that were  _Bill,_ not the winning parts, but the weird ones, the convictions, the courage? These began to fade. 

'Til one day to the cavern came a sharp knock, and the Damia hissed to hear it, and there in the entryway stood a cursebreaker, a creature with its delicate nose all smudged, and its boots encrusted with mud, and its fair hair knotted and tangled from all the trials it had undergone to reach the Damia's cavern. The Damia made to push Bill into the nectar fountain, for you must have seen by now that whenever a new one arrived, she would get rid of the old one, for she was easily bored; but perhaps it is good that she did not succeed, for this was no ordinary cursebreaker, and this was not the kind of person the Damia wanted. This cursebreaker gave a horrible shriek and it seemed to become a curse itself: its pretty face became elongated and monstrous and horrible, it sprouted hideous wings, its lovely limbs became claws, and it attacked the Damia, seemingly without provocation.

Bill attempted to intercede on the beautiful Damia’s behalf. To think that a monster should come and attack something so perfect! But it was like the monster suspected that he might try this. Whenever he came close it snatched out a claw and scraped along those old scars of his, mingling its blood and his own, and in those moments Bill would suddenly recall, with great clarity, a voice crying out that it would love him always, that scars (and fangs, and claws, and bits of monstrosity) could show that one was brave. And then he would retreat to the edge of the fountain, stupefied, and attempt to gather his wits while the fight raged on. 

The Damia met death that day. And the fountains dried up, the youths trapped inside whispered out a silent thanks, the golden light of the place dimmed, and finally Bill could see all those skulls. So there went Bill’s chance to live forever, united in perfect victory with the Damia, never suffering, never losing, bathed in gold.

Fleur, for her part, transformed back. She became again that pretty, perfect-seeming person with just a touch of the horrible about her. She worried about the dirt smudges on her nose and the blood beneath her fingernails. She informed Bill that the children were with his mother, and that he’d been gone for a year and a day. She’d had to go crawling home to Gabrielle and  _her_  mother to learn all kinds of embarrassing ancestral things, and he had another thing coming, Bill Weasley, if he thought she was going to apologize to Molly for any of it.

Then she took him home.


End file.
